An anonymous letter to my Facebook friends

Friday, September 27, 2013

The purpose of Jenni's link up today was to be as snarky as can be...in a funny way so please, don't get your panties in a wad about this post. It's only a blog post, people!

Dear friends of Facebook,

No one wants to hear about your relationship and how you breakup and get back together every five minutes, okay? Your private life should stay private, unless you are in a solid relationship. Oh, I forgot, you've been dating a week and you "love" each other and refer to one another as husband and wife. My bad, my bad. I seem to have been taught that true love was something different. I apologize. And for those of you who think people actually care about you and your rotating door of significant others...we don't. We just use your drama to make up for the drama we lack in our lives. It is quite entertaining if I do say so myself.

Posting a selfie and captioning it with anything but "picture of my self" makes no sense. "Work", "Happy", or "Doin' work" is not a sufficient caption for a picture of yourself, or a picture of your face. No work is happening in that picture other than touching a button, and your "Happy" face looks just like your "Pissed face" and your "It's the weekend" face. Am I guilty of posting a selfie? Yes. Do I post them everyday? No. I will go out on a limb and say that I have posted four, maybe five selfies, yet all of them had a focus of something other than me and my caption was not "Kissy face" or "xoxo, me". It was more like "burnt my forehead with a *&%$#*@ curling iron" or "look at this headband". Other than the hundreds of "selfies" I post for my blog (to which I consider a hobby/side job) I am not a proponent of selfies. All I'm saying is no one cares.

Hey everyone! Guess what!? No one wants to see the 2,356 things you pinned on Pinterest or the 145 pictures you liked on Instagram! As a matter of fact, we don't care about what you're listening to on Pandora, or the fake ad you liked claiming to give your free tickets to something. We don't want to know what articles you read about politics. I try to block these from my newsfeed all. the. time. but I always manage to miss someone.

You know what else we don't care about? What you're doing allll dayyyy longgggg. I know, this may sound shocking, but some people can't sit on Facebook and Tweeter all day and let the world know that at this moment they are eating a donut and two seconds later you are washing it down with a refreshing sip of Coke. I barley have time to eat a donut, so I have no idea how these people work and post on Facebook all day long.

As for friend requests. No, I'm not going to accept you after I purposefully deleted you. I am also not going to accept your request if I don't know you! Or talk to you! Or think I will ever see you again in my life!

Parents. Geezzz. Where to even begin. Act your age. Stay out of your child's gossip. Definitely don't post selfies! And please, please don't air your baby momma drama, or tell us how your baby daddy be caddy. There is nothing worse than talking about your divorce, or unpaid child support, or your crazy ex-husband. And limit the comment on your child's drunken pictures. The fact that your see your underage child hammered at a party and you 'like' it speaks volumes about your ability to actually parent.

And lastly, friends, please go through your friend list and if you don't recognize me, or my name, within two seconds, please hit delete. That will save me a lot of time that I don't have.

Don't stop there with the skewed judgement and psychoanalysis.. Also, no one cares about what you are wearing on Wednesday, or to see selfies you made your husband take of you which are also titled incorrectly. Title them "photo for attention and complements to raise my own self esteem" or "I don't receive enough complements on how beautiful I look from my husband, so please send love". Futher more "An anonymous letter to my Facebook friends", should be retitled to "A letter from my judgmental, small minded self" - the true insider from a person who should not have a masters degree. No one cares about what you posted on your blog, leave it off facebook.

The great thing for all of us, we can hide individuals on fb so we don't see your crap, however, we choose not to because we like to weigh our judgments on you to boost our view of ourselves. The fact that you people are so dang comfortable with who you are and sharing your feelings kills us because we don't have the same confidence..

This article screams 'I think I am better than you, more important and more significant'. Congrats on the effort to bring those down who are already down to begin with. The intellectual mind would notice these people are hurting in their life and the last thing they need is something else to bring them down. If the goal is to reduce the postings we all disapprove of and frown on, perhaps being a friend to them would actually result in a more effective change.

I am really sorry that you commented as non-reply bloggers and I can't respond directly to either of you.

Let me start by saying I so appreciate you reading, and taking the time to comment, on this post! Thank you!

I am so sorry that you didn't see the light-hearted side of this post. I'll remember both of you the next time I try to intentionally be snarky.

As for questioning the love my husband has for me, and questioning my intelligence, those areas I will let you think whatever you want. I earned my MBA just like everyone else has to and I have a husband who adores me. I don't think I need to prove that to anyone.

And lastly, you're right, some people probably don't are what I wear, or what I write about...and guess what? I am not forcing anyone to read my posts or be friends with me on Facebook. By the way, Jake, you said, "...No one cares about what you posted on your blog, leave it off facebook." How do you know what I post on my person Facebook? I don't even know you!

Anyways...I appreciate your comments and hope you have the best day ever :)

Sarah,Thank you for a tactful reply and the time you took. I have a lot of respect for both you and Chris. My intent was not to bring question to the love or admiration your husband has for you, but to display the foolishness behind blind judgements. I am sorry that is the way it reads to you and I feel terrible for that. Chris is an awesome guy and I know he treats you well, it's the kind of guy he has always been.

My point: The article is not something I would have expected out of you, and I am disappointed, "snarky" or not. It is just not the publication I imagine representing our fellow alumni, especially from someone as well put together as yourself. Your statement proves my entire point, "I am not forcing anyone to read my posts". No one forces anyone to read the posts about their baby daddy's problems either-- it's there as social media. What's different about posting your blog updates on Facebook from that of people who post their pinterest likes and instagrams? I guess I could write an article about people who compose articles about their Facebook irritations, simply committing the same judgement in a different manner.

I see how my comment is read as if I am implying a lack of intellect. I did not intend for my mock argument to be read that way. I know you are very intelligent as you were a softball player who managed to hold a 4.0 shows you to be. I meant to show the difference between claiming the small minded side of a view point vs the intelligent side. Kindly holding up a mirror for you to see the irony, whilst doing it anonymously to avoid any bitterness and an awkward encounter the next time I run into you guys. I feel this both to be a personal feeling I could have confronted you with and appropriate for a public response since there is nothing private with the feelings in the article. That being said, I also understand if you choose for the anonymous name to seem coward of me.

I still think highly of you and Chris, this just seemed out of character to me. I hope you understand and I hope your day has been wonderful so far. Enjoy your well deserved weekend!

Anonymous Jake Smith - I appreciate your clarification and apology. What I can seem to get over is that you used an anonymous name, yet, from what you've said, you know me. Believe me, in the world of blogging, your comment isn't the first or the last "honest" comment I will get. It isn't so much the comment that bothers me...it is more that you apparently know me and my husband and made a false accusation towards him that you admitted was wrong. I would love to know who you are, but in no way am I going to lose sleep if you think it's best to remain anonymous. I appreciate the kind words you said about me and hope you have a great night.

I really hate seeing the divorce and break up stuff, too. While I honestly usually feel bad for the person going through the split, I don't see why it's necessary to spread the bitterness all over Facebook. It only breeds hate and gossip.

Speaking of bitterness, I'm really sorry to see that you got such nasty comments on this post. I think we can all agree that there are things that bug us on Facebook, and I can't imagine that any of us are innocent of ranting about it at some point. You made it clear that it was supposed to be light hearted. But, I am coming from the link up, so I was already expecting it anyway. :)

Haters gonna hate, keep doing your thing! ps: Check the IP address for both of those people. I'm willing to bet it's the same person. I believe Northern Belle Diaries did a post on this a while back :)

Wow -- just spend the last ten minutes catching up on the comment drama and all I gotta say is BRAVO. Sooo many bloggers would have deleted those comments and cried over a glass (or two) of wine -- but not my Sarah! I'm proud of you for sticking to your guns, standing behind the whole point of the post which was to be a little "snarky" and for staying strong and leaving the comments up. You rock my friend. You rock.